A weekly blog exploring the wisdom of The Lord of the Rings

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover

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Last week we read about the failure of Númenor and the line of Stewards in Gondor that at its best kept the memory of Númenor and the faithfulness of the House of Elendil alive but eventually came to believe more in the memory than the reality. Memories are safer than realities. You can make of them what you will and your remembering can allow you to keep things as they are and not to change. So it is that we are reminded of Denethor’s words to Gandalf, “I would have things as they were”.

What capacity we all have for self deception! “Things as they were” in Gondor meant a dying land even without the invasion of Mordor. Legolas saw it and said, “The houses are dead, and there is too little here that grows and is glad”. When Denethor wished for things as they were all he really meant was that he would remain in power. What he really mourned was his own loss of control or prestige.

Faramir believes in the reality and so welcomes the king when he returns. At the moment when Gandalf crowns Aragorn, thus fulfilling the mission given to him by the Valar, Faramir cries out, “Behold the King!” He tells his people that the true king stands before them in flesh and blood with wisdom upon his brow, strength and healing in his hands, and a light about him. If any still long for the past then they are commanded to change. This is the kind of change that is meant in the word metanoia in the bible, the word that is usually translated as repentance. A new reality has come and we must change.

Tolkien goes on to tell us how everything does change.

“In his time the City was made more fair than it had ever been, even in the days of its first glory… and all was healed and made good”.

You would think that everyone would be glad to see this change, and I believe that thanks to Faramir’s leadership most people did, but I suspect that some longed for “the good old days” of the ruling Stewards.

When the true king rules everything is healed and becomes fruitful. This is a fundamental principle. In Gondor this means that gardens grew again and children were born and flourished. When King Energy is at work within us then our lives become ordered without being rigid, fruitful without being overgrown and we live and work in a kind of flow, of blessing, both for ourselves and for others.

Moore and Gillette put it this way in their seminal study of the masculine archetypes and psyche, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.

“This is the energy that expresses itself through a man when he takes the necessary financial and psychological steps to ensure that his wife and children prosper. This is the energy that encourages his wife when she decides to go back to school to become a lawyer… This is the energy that expresses itself through you when you are able to keep your cool when everyone else in the meeting is losing theirs… This is the energy that seeks peace and stability, orderly growth and nurturing for all people- and not only for all people but for the environment, the natural world. The King cares for the whole realm and is the steward of nature as well as of human society.”

This is what Aragorn is. It is what Faramir is too. You don’t have to be the boss in order to display King Energy. You can display it in service of another. I have a favourite movie, The Intern, in which a character played by Robert de Niro displays King Energy in lavish quantity as an enabler of others in a very humble role. Try and watch it and you will see what I mean. Actually the one in true authority is always aware of being a servant. In the prayers for the Queen in the Church of England we say this, “that she, knowing whose minister she is, may seek thy honour and glory”. It is only those who know that they are a servant who are able to be trusted with authority over others who can bring life-giving order, fruitfulness and blessing to them.

After the tale of how Eówyn and Merry ride to war together Tolkien takes us back to Minas Tirith and to the unhappy Peregrin Took, lonely, hungry and afraid as war draws ever closer.

“Why did you bring me here?” He asks Gandalf and the answer brings him little comfort.

“You know quite well,” said Gandalf. “To keep you out of mischief; and if you do not like being here, you can remember that you brought it on yourself.”

I said that Gandalf’s answer gave him little comfort and that is true in the sense that we normally mean it, to take a child in our arms and to hold that child in loving safety until the unhappiness passes. That is the right thing to do with a small child and not to give a child that kind of comfort is to deny her or him something very precious. In order to become a true man or woman a child must know the happy innocence of the garden but there comes a time when either the child must either leave the garden or the world outside will enter it by force.

Pippin probably thought that when he left the Shire to go with Frodo and Sam that it was a glorious “growing up” moment in his happy life. All that lay ahead was adventure and Tolkien must have been thinking about the young men crowding into the recruiting stations at the outset of the First World War in happy expectation of something magnificent before the reality hit home in the long misery of war in the trenches.

Pippin does not realise that something of great significance is happening to him. He only knows that he feels unhappy. Even when he is attired in the magnificent livery of the Tower Guard, something that once would have given him great delight he simply feels uncomfortable “and the gloom began to weigh on his spirits.”

An immature person just tries to make the gloom go away just as Pippin wants it to go. From time to time in this blog we have looked at Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s fine study of the masculine psyche, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. Moore and Gillette show the importance of these classical archetypes in shaping each man’s life. A boy who has grown up in the garden protected by good parents and a nurturing community will journey towards the adult king by way of becoming a divine child, a chosen one. He will journey towards the adult warrior by way of becoming a hero and some might think that the hero is the adult warrior. The journey to the adult magician is by way of the precious child and to the adult lover by way of the oedipal child.

Each of us, as we gain insight into ourselves, will see which of these archetypes are best developed in us and to what degree we are still held in an immature stage of development. In Pippin’s case it is pretty clear that the least developed aspect of his psyche is the magician. He needs Gandalf at this point in his life if he is to have any chance of growing up.

Readers might be thinking of mature men in The Lord of the Rings such as Aragorn and Faramir. They may remember that we spent some weeks last year thinking about Faramir when Frodo and Sam were with him in the refuge of Henneth Anûn and that he has little interest in being the hero of the story. His focus lies solely in doing the job. His desire is not his own glory but the restoration of Gondor; not just that Gondor wins but that something of the true greatness of Númenor should live again among his people. That is why he will welcome Aragorn as king with joy. Something that his father could not do.

Pippin is on the way to becoming a man and Gandalf knows that he is. That is why he does not treat him like a child. Pippin has to be miserable and to do his duty nevertheless if he is to be the “very valiant man” that Gandalf declared him to be when they first reached the defences of the Pelennor Fields.